A senior United Nations refugee official today stressed the need for urgent action by European nations to protect migrants at sea following recent incidents involving hundreds of people stranded in the Mediterranean while attempting to reach the continent.
\nVincent Cochetel, Europe Bureau Director for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said in a statement that the arrival in Italy today of a cargo ship carrying some 450 migrants is part of \u201can ongoing and worrying situation\u201d that European Governments can no longer ignore.
\nAccording to media reports, nearly 800 migrants were rescued from another ship found abandoned without any crew earlier in the week.
\nThe use of ships of such size marked a new trend, Mr. Cochetel noted, while underlining the need for urgent and concerted European action in the Mediterranean Sea, along with more efforts to rescue people at sea and stepped-up efforts to provide legal alternatives to dangerous voyages.
\n\u201cWithout safer ways for refugees to find safety in Europe, we won\u2019t be able to reduce the multiple risks and dangers posed by these movements at sea,\u201d he said. \u201cUNHCR thanks the Italian authorities for their response to these latest incidents, despite the phasing down of the Mare Nostrum operation.\u201d
\nHe emphasized his concerns about the ending of that operation despite the absence of a similar European search-and-rescue operation to replace it.
\n\u201cThis will undoubtedly increase the risk for those trying to find safety in Europe,\u201d he said.
\nUn.org<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A senior United Nations refugee official today stressed the need for urgent action by European nations to protect migrants at sea following recent incidents involving hundreds of people stranded in the Mediterranean while attempting to reach the continent. Vincent Cochetel, Europe Bureau Director for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said in a statement […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":634,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe","category-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.agencedh.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.agencedh.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.agencedh.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.agencedh.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.agencedh.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.agencedh.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.agencedh.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.agencedh.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.agencedh.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.agencedh.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}